Chicken soup is a common remedy to temporarily relieve symptoms associated with the common cold. Since the days of the early Egyptians, homemade chicken soup has been widely accepted as an aid for treating symptoms of the common cold. However, the cumbersome task of cooking homemade chicken soup has become an impediment for patients to consume it when needed. In recent history, researchers have tried, and ultimately failed, to identify exactly why chicken soup provides these temporary health benefits. Part of the problem is that there are countless recipes for chicken soup, and each recipe varies in the number and combination of ingredients that supply nutrients such as proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. Therefore, identifying a particularly advantageous formulation becomes a challenging task.
To solve these problems, several attempts have been made to dehydrate, reduce, or otherwise condense chicken soup to a cube or “pill” for consumption. While this strategy ensures that the key components of chicken soup are present in the resulting cube or “pill” (without the water), these products tend to be too large for swallowing, or require hydration back to a soup-like form. Products that require hydration to a soup-like form have an added hurdle because they are not portable and/or require an individual to utilize a number of containers when preparing the product for consumption. Additionally, the products described do not provide the opportunity to increase the amounts of particular ingredients while keeping a dosage form that remains easy to swallow.
Therefore, a need exists to provide a formulation of particular components of chicken soup, formulated in a dosage form sized and flavored for ease of oral ingestion and for ease of preparation.